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ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — For one day, in this historic Mediterranean city, the protesters won outright.

Alexandria was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the country on Friday as riot police officers fired tear-gas canisters and rubber bullets and protesters hurled paving stones in more than two hours of pitched battle.

In the end, the police capitulated in the face of too many protests around the city with too many determined demonstrators for them to contain. The police retreated, leaving the city in the hands of protesters for several hours, as police cars, the regional
party headquarters and the provincial government office burned.

“There is no government in Alexandria now,” said Muhammad Ahmed Ibrahim, 32. “They are all in hiding.”

After darkness fell, soldiers in tanks and armored personnel carriers were welcomed with cheers in downtown Alexandria, perhaps a sign of Alexandrians’ relief that some semblance of order would be retained after the destruction of a day spent venting
pent-up anger.

“The people set fire to the police station in Sharq,” said Abdullah Hassan al-Banna, 30, one of the demonstrators, referring to part of eastern Alexandria. “The people set tires on fire and threw them into the governorate”
— the government building. “We pulled down all the posters of Hosni Mubarak,” Egypt’s president.

Late Friday, downtown Alexandria was choked with smoke that blotted out the sunset. Flames licked the sides of a downtown tram station.

One man stood on a police troop carrier holding up a giant Egyptian flag as police officers inside the vehicle smiled and waved their fingers through the grates.

“For the first time in the history of the Mubarak regime, the capacity of the police was completely exhausted,” Mr. Bouckaert said. “The police state broke down today.”

Such scenes seemed all but impossible when Friday Prayer ended, with police attacking demonstrators as they streamed out of mosques and into the streets intent on marching in protest.

“They attacked us as we came out of the mosque, trying to put our shoes on,” said Salah Muhammad, 25, who had his arm around his 12-year-old brother. He said they had been inside the Sidi Beshr Mosque, at a site where one of many pitched
street battles broke out.

At first the police seemed to have the situation under control, pushing hundreds of protesters back with barrage after barrage of tear gas. But thousands more demonstrators approached, and the riot police officers found themselves outnumbered.

Several women dropped bottles and even chairs from the windows of apartment buildings onto the police. Officers were pelted with stones from rooftops and even from the walled graveyard behind the mosque. Tear-gas canisters came flying back, and several
police officers vomited as the fumes overwhelmed them.

Demonstrators with raised arms walked up to a green truck where a helmeted officer was firing tear gas canisters not into the air but straight into protesters’ bodies.

During the fighting outside the mosque, the crowd chanted “salmiya, salmiya,” which means “peaceful.” A man in a striped shirt came forward and knelt in front of the truck.

The police massed behind their shields, clutching their batons, but did not strike. “Enough,” police called over their loudspeakers. “Stop young men. Let it be finished.”

In a sign of flagging resolve, the police began to retreat and then stopped fighting entirely. It was unclear whether this was an ordered police retreat or a spontaneous, and disorganized, reaction to the situation.

After the two-hour street battle ended, protesters and police officers shook hands on the same street corner where minutes before they were exchanging volleys of stones, and tear-gas canisters were arcing through the sky.

Riot police officers and kaffiyeh-wearing youths smiled and shared water bottles as piles of tires still burned. Then thousands lined the coastal road, the gentle green waves of the Mediterranean Sea at their backs, as they got on their knees and prayed.

Such were the incongruities on a day that began quietly as always on Friday, the Muslim holy day, but soon gave way to the unrest and tensions gripping much of the country.

“We wanted this to be a peaceful demonstration,” said Ahmed Muhammad Saleh, 26, as he recounted how the police attacked the crowd as it emerged from the mosque. “But we are all Egyptians,” he said of making up with the police.

Mr. Saleh pulled up a pant leg, showing the red welt where a rubber bullet had struck him above his ankle, saying he had been tear-gassed three times. A boy in a yellow shirt pulled a spent canister from his pocket, a huge smile on his face as he held
it up as a prize.

After the clash, tens of thousands of protesters from around the city marched along the Corniche, the main boulevard along the Mediterranean, chanting for an end to the government of President Mubarak.

“I am the father of a 1-year-old daughter, and since I was growing up I’ve seen Mubarak,” said Muhammad Abdelmunmin, 30. “I don’t want my daughter to live under the same dictatorship.”

Elsewhere in the city, witnesses said protesters overwhelmed the police, seizing their shields, helmets and batons and burning their trucks. Honking cars weaved through the crowd, as the people inside them waved the captured police equipment as trophies.

Witnesses said angry demonstrators carried the body of a slain protester, and numerous injured civilians and police officers were being treated at the scene, but casualty figures were unclear with phones and the Internet down.

As darkness fell over Alexandria, the streets began to clear with word of a military curfew. A few hundred protesting men marched, chanting, “Enough, enough,” and, “Leave, Hosni.” Still, the celebratory mood had turned ominous,
and many were relieved to see the military arrive.

“Someone has to control the situation,” said Amr Muhammad, 42.

But Mr. Ibrahim spoke for many when he expressed concerns about the intentions of the military. “We don’t know if the army is with us or against us, so it’s a bad thing,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 29, 2011, on page A12 of the New York edition.